Life In Paradox Series

If you have your Bibles today and you want to follow along, we are going to be looking at John 12:20-25. Depending on where you get your news, you probably heard last week of a terrible tragedy. Comedian Robin Williams suddenly passed away by suicide. As we went through the news stories, we began to look at it and like I did you began to see that there was a lot of speculation of why Robin Williams would commit suicide. Some suggest it might have to do with his financial situation. He had been married previously two times and he was $30 million dollars in alimony payments behind. Some suggest that it may have had to do with the fact that he had early onset of Parkinson’s disease and some suggest it was just an accumulation of years of addiction and depression that came together to develop this situation where he felt there was no way out other than suicide. As I went through the articles trying to think about how it might fit with today’s sermon, one thing that kept coming up was this idea of paradox. People kept saying that Robin Williams’ life was a paradox. A paradox is a person or situation exhibiting an apparently contradictory nature. The paradox in Robin Williams’ life was that people would say he was a very funny man. Someone that had the ability to make millions of people laugh but for some reason couldn’t make his own heart very happy. That is the paradox.

Today, as we begin to look in John 12, we begin to see another paradox. Jesus is giving a contradictory-type statement. If we adhere to it though, it would actually give us life everlasting. Life right now and life everlasting. We have been going through the series called The Story, which is God’s story as told through the people, places, and events of the Bible. We have been talking about the New Testament portion of the story. Specifically Jesus’ ministry and his miracles. Over the last few weeks, we talked about Jesus was well known for his teaching. He went around Galilee and the surrounding areas, and he began to attract people because he was so good at what he taught. He had his immediate followers, the band of 12 disciples. He had his extended group of followers that were just people following him out of curiosity. Then he began to attract people from outside the area. What we find today in John 12 starting at verse 20, we find that he began to attract a group of people simply known as the Greeks. That is where we are going to pick up the story. John 12:20. (Scripture read here.)

Jesus is being pursued by this group of people known as the Greeks. We really don’t know a lot about the Greeks other than it says they came up to worship at the feast. Some suspect that the Greeks were intrigued by the Jews because the Jews had such high morals. They were attracted to that. Some also suggest that the Greeks had heard about Jesus, this famous Rabbi, this famous Jewish teacher and decided to pursue him and maybe ask him some philosophical questions. As the story goes, the Greeks came up and first they found Philip who was believed to actually be Greek. Then Philip went and got his friend Andrew. Both Philip and Andrew ended up going to find Jesus. They find Jesus and say Jesus there are some Greeks outside that want to see you. Jesus, as he often does, answers in some sort of a vague esoteric way and he says “I tell you the truth, unless this kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed, but if it dies, it produces many seeds.” You can imagine Andrew and Philip saying come on Jesus. The Greeks are outside. Can you give them something besides this? Is this all you got? We really don’t know what Jesus is alluding to here, but some suspect that he is alluding to his coming crucifixion. It is the idea that just as a seed would fall to the ground and die and produce a stalk of wheat with many seeds, the idea that Jesus when he goes to the cross is going to die and out of his death, burial, and resurrection will come many new lives because the people put their faith in him. We know that is kind of how Paul views it back in Romans. Paul talks about just as sin came through one man, Adam, and resulted in death to many. The death of one man, being Jesus, resulted in life to many. That is kind of the idea that is going on here.

But then he goes on to say something a little bit even more bizarre. He goes on to say “The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” I don’t know if you ever sat down and thought about this passage, but it really doesn’t make any sense at all. Let’s think of it in a job situation. If you really love your job, you are going to lose it, but if you really hate your job, you get to keep it forever. That is basically what he is saying here. That doesn’t sound like a very good deal. As usual, we read this and we really don’t realize that Jesus probably has something else in mind. If we peel away the English text and begin to look at the Greek text, we see that Jesus has something else in mind. Especially when we consider the fact that he is really translation two separate Greek words into the word life. The Greek word psyche and the Greek word zoe. If we plugged it in it would be like this, “The man who loves his life (his psyche) will lose it, while the man who hates his life (his psyche) in this world will keep it for eternal life (zoe).” I don’t know why, but the translators only give it the word life. They only translate it life. The word psyche and the word zoe are two way different meanings of the word life. As a side note, for those who aren’t aware, I know we talk about the Greek and everything else. Just so you know, the original New Testament was written in Greek. If we want to get back to the real meaning behind the words, it is helpful to be able to go back to the Greek. That is why we refer to the Greek. When we peel the English away, we see these two Greek words; psyche and zoe.